GamesIndustry.biz quotes EA executive VP and GM of international publishing
Gerhard Florin, who does not conceal his frustration in a conversation with
German website
SPIEGEL
ONLINE over the German rating system that is exceptionally strict about
video game violence. Florin calls the system "censorship" and demands Germany
drop its USK system in favor of the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) system
used elsewhere. They also offer a counter-point from USK head Marek Brunner, who
points out other regulations influence this situation, including German criminal
law, and that the there are "no plans" to adopt the PEGI system.

You can explain away factors ad nauseum. However, there are existential responsibilites that need to be applied to any human / social / political situation or you'll just go in circles and never determine causality.

Apparently still in college or kissing intellectual ass to please the professor.

Ah yes. Jump on those ad-hom's, and apply poor reasoning. Yes, yes. Suffer in ignorance because you fail to understand how the world works. There were no causal factors which directly contributed to it was there? Now you know why they no longer require states who start wars no matter what to pay reparations as part of the settlements.

Let me know what color the sky is in your world. And just an FYI, I finished university 10 years ago.

--"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

If people dont react on actions (no matter if good or bad - because we learn from both, but especially from bad things) then the species will stagnate and die too.

You obviously dont understand that we need to analyze such things to understand them. Just looking at the result and the nearest cause and reacting to that might be good enough as a 3 year old child in the sand box or for the lion thats hungry and runs off to kill something, or a man that beats his wife because she didnt make him dinner in time, but surely not for a social and complex species like us as a whole.

Bad things are a part of this world, and we learn from them by analyzing them thoroughly. If we dont, they will repeat themselves over and over again. If we keep let that happen, we dont have the right to call us an intelligent and adaptive race.

Oh that is so lame... You will PAY for your use of inappropriate dialogue!- Mojo Jojo

That's a perfectly good reason to fly planes full of innocent citizens into buildings full of innocent citizens if I ever heard one! The USA's freedom fighters should have retaliated by flying a nuclear tipped cruise missile into that rock in Mecca during the Haji and just called things even.

Comments like this really give me hope in humanity's future. Uniformly blaming the entire German nation for WWII and condemning the Middle East to nuclear extermination, wonderful just fucking wonderful.

Never under-estimate the human capacity for hate and destruction. Q was right all along.

Why was Iraq and Afghanistan invaded? Because these fucking terrorists bombed the WTC! Right, but incomplete. Why have they done that? Because the US government is an ally to dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi-Arabia. And to Israel. Terrorists (or freedom fighters, seen from the other side) attack the USA to force an end to US engagement in this region.

That's a perfectly good reason to fly planes full of innocent citizens into buildings full of innocent citizens if I ever heard one! The USA's freedom fighters should have retaliated by flying a nuclear tipped cruise missile into that rock in Mecca during the Haji and just called things even.

Oh, BobBob ... and that is why we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of our fathers over and over again. We make complex situations simple, because we don't want to think, WHY these things happen. Is "Germany started WWII" correct? Yes! But this answer is incomplete. You HAVE to consider the reasons, why it all started, to prevent further incidents.

Why was Iraq and Afghanistan invaded? Because these fucking terrorists bombed the WTC! Right, but incomplete. Why have they done that? Because the US government is an ally to dictatorships in Egypt and Saudi-Arabia. And to Israel. Terrorists (or freedom fighters, seen from the other side) attack the USA to force an end to US engagement in this region.

And so on, and so on ... ALWAYS ask, why someone does this or does that. If not, don't complain, if you find yourself suddenly, for example, in a war.

Godwins law doesnt tell you if something is justified or not. Many Nazi comparisons are justified. By ignoring them completely with a childish "OMG OMG OMG Godwins law, losers!", youre only showing your own inability to think for yourself.

Mashiki Amiketo,nice to see someone looking at things more objectively. We cant just blame the guy who started all this because bad things are bad. We also have to look at the causes that made him (and many others) do that.

Oh that is so lame... You will PAY for your use of inappropriate dialogue!- Mojo Jojo

Apparently still in college or kissing intellectual ass to please the professor. Whatever the reasons, a thief is a thief because he stole an item -- motivation doesn't matter; who cares if he had a bad child-hood, lived in a depression, or if he was a drug addict. Germany started a war by invading a soveriegn nation -- simple. As to why things happen, sure we can go on about that, however excuses or reasoning aside, the action lead to a reaction -- invasion caused a war.

Sorry wrong. That's the simple answer, the war "started" on a particular day. That's not what set it into motion.

So here's why WWII happened: Germany invaded Poland as a result of electing an expansionist and charasmatic leader who believed in particulars of policy, in order to offset massive hyper-inflation and to cover their debt, and basically required more resources. The German people who were so pissed off at hyperinflation, mass-currency deflation, and had enough said: "We'll settle for any leader who will get us out of this." This was because at the time the German government simply flipped on the presses and started printing money. Well great idea to pay off the debt. Now lets not forget that this debt, and repayments worked out to being around 150-250% of the German GDP. This was enacted by 2 parties, the League of Nations and France. Especially France, they really wanted Germany to pay for all of WWI. So now we're talking some pretty nasty inflation aren't we? No country can pay extortion rates like that.

And by the time he was elected their money was so worthless, due to inflation when you ordered a cup of coffee at a cafe you paid first, because clerks were constantly updating the prices due to the inflation. A cup could be 20DM when you sat down and 28DM when you got your cup. And why you'd a wheelbarrow full to buy a loaf of bread. You think that stuff is a story? Yeah it's a story all right, right out of truth.

So the German people said: "We'll take any leader who will get out of this pile of stinking shit." to paraphrase, and along comes a great charismatic leader who says, "I can do that." And so he does, by saying. Fuck you to the League of Nations, and France, and Europe. And so the opening of WWII begins.

Failing to understand the undercurrents of why the war started is pure ignorance. What you think someone sits down and goes LALALA, lets have a war? Doesn't happen like that. WWI didn't even happen like that. Look up the state of mobilization, then you can understand why WWI started. Mobilization is why WWI started.

--"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

Why bother with censorship in games? Games can be imported, games can be downloaded. Only dumb children can't get their hands on these kind of games. I couldn't care less about this ...

I put my energy in the fight against censoring free speech, against goverment attempts to gain more control of the internet. THIS is important. Blood or boobies in games are only a minor, minor aspect of the greater picture.

But for what its worth, a little bit of fact to spice the story (and show just how retarted that EA guy is):

The USK is a vast improvement compared to how it was before. Back then, there was no rating agency at all (meaning no enforabiliy, and thus it legaly did not exist). As a result, almost everything deemed not suitable for children was put on the index, meaning that you could it access about as well as weed (no advertisement allowed, no presentation in stores. You could only buy it by asking for it and showing that you are 18 or older). Doom, Quake, Duke3d, etc. No way really to get it, because shops did not stock product that they cannot reasonably sale

Well, then came the USK, which is a rating by the _industy itself_, btw. Exactly the same system than used for movies. Meaning they put a little red "18+" sticker an all the FPS, which she shop has to take care of, just like when selling porn or cigarrets. The end result is that now, i can go into any electronics chain and by quake4 or anything like that without a problem. Its right there on the shelf.

Wanting to abolish that rating system would not work out in the way mr. florin thinks at all. if he thinks.

Not to mention that the policical and social standing of gaming is precarious at best. Such a heavy handed try at lobbying (and claiming age ratings are "censorship" and then trying to push their own age ratings is heavy handed) has a snowballs chance in hell to work. Its really more likely to make it worse for everybody.

"The start of the war is generally held to be September 1, 1939, with the German invasion of Poland and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by most of the countries in the British Empire and Commonwealth, and by France."